Alistair Seddon

I am a long-term ecologist and global-change ecologist studying ecological responses to environmental change. I lead the PalaeoChem Research Group and am an active researcher in Palaeoecology at UiB. My main work is in developing new methods to (i) reconstruct UV-B radiation in sediments based on pollen-chemical biomarkers and (ii) investigate other applications of pollen chemistry in long-term ecology. I am also interested in using long-term ecological and other time-series datasets to better understand drivers of ecosystem and biodiversity change in the past, present and future. We mainly use field and greenhouse experiments and sediment cores to research these questions.

I also act as leader the Terrestrial Ecology Research Group, which consists of 8 other permanent members of staff and series of other research teams whose focus is on understanding the drivers of biodiveristy and ecological and evolutionary changes in terrestrial ecosystems.

I am very interested in supervising masters students for 2025 and 2026! Please get in contact if you are interested in doing a project either in the field, lab, or greenhouse! We have lots of potental exciting projects including:

• Greenhouse experiments to test UV responses of plants (within the Laschamps-UV project and with Alistair Seddon)
• Measures of ecosystem resilience using fossil pollen records (with a specific focus on South African Biomes with Alistair Seddon)
• Quantifying biodiversity change and the responses to human activity in the Holocene (with Vivian Felde)